U.S. Crop Diversity Declining but…5 Ag Regions Buck This Trend!

A new USDA study (published in the journal PLOS ONE) tracked crop diversity across farms in the US from 1978 to 2012 using five year ag census data.

While the overall data confirms the dominance of monoculture farming – a practice known not to be sustainable in the long-term – there is evidence that in five of the nine Farm Resource Regions where fruits and vegetables reign supreme crop diversity was either maintained or increased slightly. Check out the map for specifics and read more…